Vlatko Markovic, head of the Croatian football federation, attends a news conference to apologise for anti-gay remarks he made in an interview. Photograph: Darko Bandic/AP

Gay and lesbian groups across Europe have called on sporting authorities to take disciplinary action against the head of Croatia's football federation after he said gay players would be banned from playing for the country.

Vlatko Markovic served to emphasise the extent to which homophobia is still rife in the sport after saying that "only healthy people play football" and adding that there was no room for gay men in the sport. The European Gay and Lesbian Sport Federation (EGLSF), which represents 17,000 active sportsmen and women, is leading the calls for legal action to be taken against Markovic and calling on Uefa, the governing body of football in Europe, to initiate disciplinary proceedings against him. Uefa says it has not yet opened an investigation.

Ulrike Lunacek, the Austrian Green MEP and active participant in the Gay Games, warned that if the Croatian government failed to take action against Markovic his outburst could affect its application to join the European Union. One of the conditions is that the country implements EU-standard anti-discrimination legislation.

Markovic told both the Croatian daily Vecernji list and the Serbian tabloid Vecernje novosti: "As long as I'm president [of the football federation] there will be no gay players. Thank goodness only healthy people play football."

The 73-year-old, who is campaigning for a fourth term as federation president, later said he had been misunderstood and apologised. The Croatian gay rights groups Kontra and Iskorak have called for Markovic to prove the sincerity of his remorse by raising the rainbow flag, a symbol of gay rights, during Croatia's Euro 2012 qualifier against Malta this Wednesday. Markovic's remarks were followed by an appeal from a leading German player for gay players to muster the courage to come out. Mario Gomez, 25, the Bayern Munich striker, said it was time to stop treating homosexuality as a "taboo topic", adding that if players felt they could come out, they would "play as though they had been liberated".

His comments caused a stir: they went against the grain of anything any other leading player had said on the topic, with most warning that an outing would put too much pressure on a player active in what, despite the large rise in female spectators in recent years, remains a predominantly macho sport.

Theo Zwanziger, the head of Germany's football federation, who has been commended for his appeal to gay players to approach him if they want to come out, has voiced his surprise that professional football remains one of the few areas of public life where homosexuality is taboo. "In politics, art and culture it is no longer a problem but professional football appears to be more set in its ways," he said. Some gay players particularly in Germany and Italy, even arrange fake marriages, German media expert Tatjana Eggeling told the TV programme ZDF Sportstudio.

Although experts estimate that around 10% of footballers are gay, hardly any have come out. It is 20 years since Justin Fashanu became the only prominent British footballer active in the sport to do so. Fashanu, who killed himself in 1998 after being accused of sexual assault, recalled how his life had been made unbearable by repeated taunts of "bloody poof" from the late Brian Clough, his manager at Nottingham Forest, who banned him from training with the team after his homosexuality was revealed.

Austria's former football federation chief, Otto Baric, was fined by Uefa after saying in 2004: "I know that there's no homosexual in my team. I'd recognise a gay man within 10 minutes and I don't want to have them in my team."

The former managing director of the Italian club Juventus, Luciano Moggi, is on record as saying: "A homosexual can't fulfil the job of a footballer. I wouldn't put one under contract and if I discovered I had one, he would fly immediately."